The moment Dr. Lambert threw the sphere into the airspace above the candidates, it started emitting a droning sound along with countless streams of multi-colored bright light that spread out to cover the entire platform in the shape of a pyramid. In an instant, the light completely sealed all the prospective candidates within, as the sphere continued to hover in mid-air.

Everyone looked up and around them in shock, subconsciously huddling closer together towards the center of the platform for fear of coming in contact with the light. Jenell clutched onto the back of Dante’s shirt stuttering: “W-what’s going on?” the last word spoken by Dr. Lambert; “survive” caused fear and worry to fill her heart. It wasn’t just her who felt trepidation in their hearts and wondered about this, everyone was thrown into a pandemonium with their minds sent reeling. Many looked towards Dr. Lambert expecting an answer, but all they received were his cold eyes staring at them through the light as though they were being sentenced to their deaths.

Dante’s eyes were locked onto Dr. Lambert the entire time during his speech as he analyzed his words carefully; focusing on every detail. When Dr. Lambert mentioned the changes that were going to be made to their training programme, a strange light started burning within Dante’s eyes. The moment Dr. Lambert threw that sphere towards them and spoke his final words, Dante’s mind was filled with vigilance.

“Everyone, settle down!” A voice boomed out, the speaker was the leader of team #9. After his voice boomed out, it caused the hubbub of noise to quickly die out.

Dante edged back towards his team and instructed them: “Everyone, stay close and watch each other’s backs.” At Dante’s command, all the members of team #10 paired up into groups of two and were looking around attentively.

A short while after Dr. Lambert threw the sphere out, he tapped a few buttons on a device that was attached to his left wrist which caused the sphere in mid-air to start rotating much faster. Everyone noticed a change in the sphere because the curtain of light started rotating at a faster speed than before. After a brief moment, the light grew so bright it became impossible to see the world beyond the curtain of light. Everyone grew more vigilant of their surroundings and at the same time, more worried as time progressed.

After observing the rotating curtain of light for a moment, the leader of team #8 turned to look at everyone for anything out of place. When she did, she caught sight of something strange happening in team #10, when she looked closer her eyes constricted into dots and as she exclaimed: “Dante! Your arm! Look at your arm!” Everyone became spooked at the sudden outburst and turned to look at the one being mentioned.

Hearing his name, Dante turned to look at the person who called out to him. When he heard her say ‘to look at his arm’, he grew a bit confused but looked at his arms nonetheless. When he glanced at his right arm, he sucked in a deep cold breath and his eyes went wide with disbelief. He felt a tremor run through his body as he saw his right arm disintegrating!

“Shit!” Dante exclaimed while retreating from his group. The sight of the floating particles that were once Dante’s arm caused everyone’s face to pale and doggedly back away from him in shock. Almost everyone’s gaze looked at Dante with pity and dread as though he was touched by a plague.

Dante started flailing his arm as though it were on fire, but his arm continued to disintegrate and very quickly spread across his body. Jenell who was beside him earlier looked at him in shock. Fear, worry, and confusion filled her thoughts. She subconsciously stepped forward towards Dante in an attempt to help somehow but was very sternly told to stay away from Dante by her team members and thus, unwillingly came to a stop. Dante wasn’t sure whether or not this was something that would spread on contact and didn’t want to endanger anyone else, especially Jenell. But against his wishes, ‘the plague’ continued to spread and more screams rang out.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Within the group, several others were experiencing the same thing. They started disintegrating from various parts of their bodies.  Everyone grew so frightened that they didn’t even realize that they felt no pain while all this was happening to them. But no one thought of this, the sight of their bodies suddenly disappearing bit by bit before their eyes were too traumatizing to even have the time to remember what pain felt like. Before long, everyone had most of their bodies turned into tiny particles, some even fainted after going into shock.

Jenell felt a tingling sensation all over her body and felt a shiver run down her spine. She looked down at her left hand and saw it disintegrating bit by bit as the seconds slipped by. Realizing that she was in the same situation as Dante she gritted her teeth and wanted to go over to him, but to her surprise, her legs would not move, no matter how much she willed it they didn’t even budge. At this moment, the speed of the disintegration increased dramatically and climbed up to her throat. In her last moments, before she disappeared, she looked towards Dante and stretched out what remained of her left arm as if hoping that would be enough to bridge the gap between them, shouting. “Dan-!”

The last thing Dante saw before he disappeared was everyone’s body turning into floating, multi-colored particles and Jenell's worry stricken face.

“Worry?” he thought to himself. "She's actually worried about me?"

Not fear for her own life but worry for his sake. Dante felt that if his torso hadn’t already disintegrated his heart would be in pain at this moment as he witnessed the sight. When his and Jenell's gazes were locked, he wanted to say something to her but only his lips moved. His throat and tongue had already disappeared…

Even after everyone disappeared, the sound of their screams and cries still lingered in the air for several seconds. It made the Amphitheatre suddenly feel haunted. Vladimir and Vlatka who were sitting not too far away in the Assault Division’s designated area were pale as snow and were quivering in their seats. They could still hear the miserable shrieks of the candidates resounding throughout the Amphitheatre. When the sound-wave passed through their bodies, it felt as though the departed souls of the candidates wanted to bring them along, causing them to feel even more terrified and their faces to pale even further. 

After a brief moment, the droning sound from the sphere finally ceased and the multi-colored light retracted and then the sphere returned to Dr. Lambert’s grasp. Dr. Lambert turned his gaze towards the twins in the distance as if wondering what to do with them. When the twins felt Dr. Lambert’s gaze locked onto them, they nearly voluntarily gave up their souls to King Yama just to escape his cold eyes.

After witnessing everything that just happened, Julia frowned and looked at her husband, quite displeased with his actions. “Aren’t you being a ‘bit’ too cruel today? Why didn’t you tell them anything?”

Dr. Lambert replied, clearly not surprised by the question his wife asked: “I wasn’t being cruel. In fact, I was being quite generous. My speech earlier was meant to do three things. First, to plant a sense of urgency into their minds based on the war which is, in fact, true and irrefutable. Second, to stimulate their desire for more power, you could say that it was a short motivational speech, and thirdly I told them about the hostile situation that they were going to be in for the next month.  So, your unfounded allegations are without grounds.” Dr. Lambert turned around with a smirk on his face, believing that he was like a righteous untainted saint who had just accomplished a great deed. But to all onlookers, he looked like a demon that just condemned 2100 young souls to hell… This was truly a great deed, one worthy divine punishment! After he turned around, he noticed his wife was looking at him with her mouth agape at his reply and his proud expression. Fuming, she berated him: “You could’ve at least told them they were going to be teleported! Some of them almost died from the shock of seeing their bodies disintegrating!”

Dr. Lambert tilted his head in confusion while looking at his wife, recalling what just happened, he thought about it some more and realized that he forgot to tell them that important little detail. “Oh… oops,” he said while scratching the corner of his eyebrow.

“OOPS?! OOPS?!” Julia’s beautiful face became a startling red and her eyebrows turned into crescent moons as she continued to berate her husband “You nearly killed them all before they even arrived at The Island! How could you be so careless!?” Even though she was shouting at him and was clearly quite upset, it still sounded quite pleasing to his ear, causing him to smile. Sighing helplessly, Julia shook her head and continued. “No wonder everyone is afraid of you…”

Gabrielle who stood to the side wrapped her scarf around her beautiful lips to stifle her laugh and hide the wide grin that was plastered on her face.

Not long afterward, the sound of footsteps and chatter could be heard coming from the multitude of persons entering the Amphitheatre from the other entrances. Julia had a premonition that the 10 Divisions were about to experience something far worse than the prospective candidates. Gabrielle continued to look expectantly at the two. It seemed this was a regular occurrence that brought her no small amount of entertainment.